Define Hyperlinks

Presenting too much information in one report can overwhelm readers with distracting details, causing them to miss information that is important to them. You can manage the amount of information displayed in a report by hyperlinking from one report to other related reports, charts, dashboards, and URLs. For example, you can present basic information in an easy-to-comprehend report with hyperlinks to reports that contain details.

For charts, hyperlinks take precedence over the drill-down chart feature. For example, when readers click a bar in a chart, it displays data related to the hyperlink you define, not the drill-down chart.

For reports, you can define a hyperlink on any row label or column header. When you define a hyperlink, the link is applied to all members within the row or column. In this source report, hyperlinks have been defined for the Positions row label and the Region column header. Notice how each of the row and column members have a blue underlined hyperlink.

When defining hyperlinks to a destination report that has parameters, you can map row labels and column headers in the source report to parameters in the destination report. This enables you to constrain the hyperlink result to display only data for the mapped parameters. If you do not restrain the results, all of the data appears and no filter applies.

For example, you can create a hyperlink in the source report for all the members in the Position row, and constrain the displayed data to only that related to each position and its department. To do this, you map the Department and Position row labels in the source report to the Business Unit and Job Title parameters in this destination report.

This is the result when the reader clicks on the Administrative Assistant position within the Finance Department in the source report.

Each parameter added to the mapping constrains the data further. You can map any row labels that appear to the left, and column headers that appear above the member data.

Note: If you did not constrain the data with parameters, readers would see data for all Administrative Assistant Positions in all Departments.

Create Hyperlinks to a Report in the BA Repository

Create an Analyzer report or open an existing one.

Right-click a row label or column header and select Hyperlink. The Link on dialog box appears.

Click Enable Link to activate the hyperlink feature. You can disable linking by clearing the Enable Link check box.

In the Link To drop-down menu, select Pentaho Repository File.

Click Browse to locate a report, chart, or dashboard in the BA repository and click Open.

If the destination report has parameters, they automatically appear in the Destination Parameter list on the left. Map parameters to related row labels or column headers by selecting the check box for each parameter you want to use to constrain the resulting data. Enter the related names of the row labels or column headers within curly brackets.

If the destination report does not have parameters, the Destination Parameter list does not appear. Go to the next step.

Specify how hyperlink content displays by clicking the Open in: drop-down menu and selecting New Tab, New Window, or Current Window.

Enter a Tool Tip to be displayed when you hover over hyperlinks and click OK. Hyperlinks appear in the Analyzer report.

Click the links to ensure the content associated with them appears correctly and save the report.

Hyperlinking to a URL

Create an Analyzer report or open an existing one.

Right-click a row label or column header and select Hyperlink. The Link on dialog box appears.

Click Enable Link to activate the hyperlink feature. You can disable linking by clearing the Enable Link check box.

In the Link To drop-down menu, choose URL from the dropdown menu.

In the URL field, enter the full web address you want the hyperlink to launch. For example, http://www.yahoo.com.

Choose how the URL displays by clicking on the Open in:drop-down menu and selecting New Tab, New Window, or Current Window.

Enter a Tool Tip to be displayed when you hover over hyperlinks and click OK. The new hyperlinks appear in the Analyzer report.

Click the links to ensure the website associated with them appears correctly and save the report.